You know, I'm actually thinking along the lines with Rick. It doesn't make sense that it just "disappeared", if the files contained those emails, they become part of the file itself. The only time I could think that they truly went to nirvana is if you never never rebooted since moving the files from IMAP to different, local folders within PM - of course, I do know about the 'no no' of backing up the PM database while PM is open, so yes, there is that chance that the files did get lost, but this coincidence with which messages disappeared is just so big.
Just for the heck of it, do a search on your drive for "Message Database" and ensure tripple and quadruple that you don't have more than one of these files on your drive (crossing fingers for you). I can fully understand your annoyance with yourself about missed backups: I had been making backups of PM and also from time to time of my drives, but I slacked and since OSX I had so much trouble with "Synchronize! X Plus" and permission errors during backup and not being able to mount drives etc. etc. that I backed my drives maybe every month or such - until I truly had a hard crash on my desktop and lost data of a whole month. I had been lucky though, during that time I had been 2 weeks on vacation and the job for a client had been a website which had been emailed to him and thus I had a copy of the final product on my powerbook. But the hassle of recovering files from the damaged drive and the scare of what I've potentially all could have lost - my first true hard drive major trouble beyond repair in 15 years of constant working with computers - made me think very hard about backups. Since then I installed "Super Duper" which backsup BOTH my machines EVERY night to external fire drives to our home server. We bought a bay with several removable fire drives which are easily swapped and now my husband and I each have several of them, for project backups and system backups and then mirrors of the two - the mirror backups are supposed to go 1x per month into a bank safe, outside our house (which houses our 2 offices) - just in case (as the insurance will NOT pay a thing towards lost data if the house gets burned down, flooded, robbed or whatever). Since October I've gotten so good to make the daily backups and even to have a mirror copy - but still haven't brought the mirrors to the bank, even though we do have a safe there, ready to be used. This sounds probably all extremely over cautious, and I'm actually not somebody who thinks constantly the worst will happen - but once having lost SOME data and realizing what we COULD loose and no insurance would pay or even remotely be able to pay the mental work and all which had gone into our work - and almost ALL our work and creativity is on data carriers - the hassle of these backups suddenly didn't seem so big any longer. Just a little story which might make the one or other person also think about how important the data on their computer is to them or not. ---marlyse ------------ former message(s) quotes: ------------- >Dear Rick, > >Your intuition is correct: I did not start a new database, which >would have been quite obvious. Nor do I think I started an old >backup, I only have one PowerMail Files folder on my HD. > >I am quite annoyed at myself that I had not set up a backup routine >for my email after I received a new logic board and HD (all under >warranty) last December. I'll guess the one thing to do is >immediately creating a daily backup routine with Retrospect for my >Mail folder. I have some for DT databases and all documents, but not >yet for mail... > >Thanks for your suggestions! > >Willem
